


After the War

by hespereia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drabble, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 04:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17439560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hespereia/pseuds/hespereia
Summary: They saved the world, but they did not fix it. How could they, these children who were not children, but soldiers. They had never learned how to build. They thought having children of their own would make them whole, and that is far too much pressure to put on the tiny shoulders of infants. They became not-children with children of their own, but how can they raise them, in this world where they are not soldiers but heroes, with no idea how to live.





	After the War

 

They saved the world, but they did not fix it. How could they, these children who were not children, but soldiers. They had never learned how to build. They thought having children of their own would make them whole, and that is far too much pressure to put on the tiny shoulders of infants. They became not-children with children of their own, but how can they raise them, in this world where they are not soldiers but heroes, with no idea of how to live.

 

Harry keeps fighting his whole life, with the aurors. He tries to be a good father but he doesn’t feel right, he’s too jumpy, still a fighter. He’ll burn out one day, and his own niece will write his exposé; **The Boy Who Lived; The Man Who Didn’t Know How To**. Ginny takes to the skies to escape her own head. Lord Voldemort may be gone, but Tom Riddle never will be, not while she lives. He’ll whisper in her ear every day of her life, the boy she poured her soul into. She’ll never tell anyone that when Harry destroyed the diary, a part of her died too. One day she’ll crack, and the world will watch in wonder, in horror, in awe, as Harry and Ginny Potter take one final stand together, at opposite ends of the battle field. It will be her last fight, it won’t be his.

 

Hermione thinks she can fix the world with her quill, from behind her desk at the Ministry. Her children will say it doesn’t matter, because she’ll never fix what’s important. One day she’ll look back on her life, and she won’t see her career achievements, but the failings of her family life; the children she does not know, the husband she let slip away. Ron doesn’t have any fight left in him. He thinks he can hold his family together, but even that battle is too great a task. He’ll fade away in a haze of alcohol, and watch from the sidelines as they all fall apart.

 

Draco is haunted, by the ghost of a boy with slicked back blonde hair and a dark mark on his arm. He works himself to the bone in his attempts to atone. He is humility and a quiet, easy grace, he is an echo of a person, so desperate for forgiveness he cannot even spare time for his own son. He looks at the baby and thinks, _you will not be defined by my past_. But he is, of course he is.

 

George is half a person, and he is full of rage. His shop is full of explosions, his home is full of fireworks, and his heart is full of Fred. Angelina was the only one willing to indulge him, and so they rage together. Their children are brought up on it, they will stand with their cousin in the Ministry one day, the fury they were weaned on boiling inside them as they stare down the Boy Who Lived, and they play judge, jury, and executioner (but the twins will not claim the title of accuser, that belongs to his children alone).

 

Percy will not repeat the mistakes of his past, will not turn his back on his family again, but he will never learn to look his twin daughters in the eye. They’re not like Fred and George, not identical, not even close, but they move together as one and seeing them whole makes his chest burn with guilt. They learn not to expect too much from Daddy, who always spent more time with their cousins than them, he’s trying to take the place of the man he thinks deserves to be here more than he does, and in doing so proves that to be true. The girls are eight when they decide they don’t need their parents, don’t need anyone besides their cousin, and as their father loses himself trying to justify his place in this world, in this family, they create an airtight bubble just big enough for three, and leave the rest of the world behind. Audrey stands on the outside, a quiet observer. She loves her husband, loves her daughters, but she does not know what to do with this broken family. She did not fight their war and does not see their demons, so she does the only thing her mother ever taught her, and sticks around just long enough to see her girls off into the world, then quietly packs up and leaves. None of them ever see or hear from her again, even her daughter the investigative journalist doesn’t come looking for her. It is not until she receives a newspaper clipping, **War Hero Found Dead in London Home** through her letterbox, that she realises it is not that they can’t find her, it’s just they don’t care to. She slips off her wedding ring that day and buries it in the park, a funeral service with a lone mourner (though really, she thinks, she is mourning something she lost long ago).

 

Charlie alone does not fall into the pattern of having children to wash away the past. When the war was won he returned to Romania and never looked back, though his sofa is always ready to receive a stray niece or nephew. He takes them in as lost, broken children, as raging alcoholics, as fugitives and criminals, and he does not say a word. He looks at the mistakes his siblings have made and he does not try to fix them; people are so much more complex than dragons, and he hates to stray from what he knows.

 

Bill was the big brother, the protector, the leader. He looks at his baby brothers and sister and wonders how they got here (trick question, the answer will always be the war) He thought when his first daughter was born that she was their first step towards fixing things, that she would lead the new, golden generation the way he had their family, once upon a time. But when the rest follow suit, he watches each one stray, and he does not try to step up, to lead them. He stopped being their leader long ago (his place was taken, by a marked boy with green eyes and a war at his heels) so instead he takes his wife by the hand and leads her back to their bedroom, they lock themselves away from the world, the wolf-man and the veela-girl (theirs is a story that their daughter will repeat, that first, golden child, who will not lead anyone anywhere, bar the metamorphmagus-wolf-boy, who will follow her into the depths of their entwined souls) they will be so fixated on each other that they will not have love enough even for their children, who find themselves in the habit of absorbing themselves into other people.

 

They saved the world, but they did not fix it. They, too, were war torn and ravaged, and they were exhausted. They look around at the tattered world they will leave for their children, and they can only hope that they will succeed where their parents have failed. The new generation will raise themselves, uniting against the child heroes who brought them into the world, then left them to figure it out for themselves. They promise themselves they will not make their parents mistakes. 

**Author's Note:**

> Lil bit of nonsense. Will probably revisit/amend - not too big on the ending and maybe they need to be in a different order (lmk if you have any thoughts) also trying to think of a better title. Potential follow up on the Potter kids.


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